Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization: Vinča (Old Europe) 5,500–4,500 BC
The
Vinča culture, also known as
Turdaș culture or Turdaș-Vinča culture, is a Neolithic archaeological culture in
Central Europe and
Southeastern Europe, dated to the period
5700–
4500 BCE.
Named for its type site,
Vinča-Belo Brdo, a large tell settlement discovered by
Serbian archaeologist
Miloje Vasić in
1908, it represents the material remains of a prehistoric society mainly distinguished by its settlement pattern and ritual behaviour. Farming technology first introduced to the region during the
First Temperate Neolithic was developed further by the Vinča culture, fuelling a population boom and producing some of the largest settlements in prehistoric
Europe. These settlements maintained a high degree of cultural uniformity through the long-distance exchange of ritual items, but were probably not politically unified.
Various styles of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figurines are hallmarks of the culture, as are the
Vinča symbols, which some conjecture to be an early form of proto-writing. Though not conventionally considered part of the Chalcolithic or "
Copper Age", the Vinča culture provides the earliest known example of copper metallurgy.
The Vinča culture occupied a region of Southeastern Europe (i.e. the
Balkans) corresponding mainly to modern-day
Serbia and
Kosovo, but also parts of
Romania,
Bulgaria,
Bosnia,
Montenegro,
Macedonia, and
Greece.
This region had already been settled by farming societies of the First Temperate Neolithic, but during the
Vinča period sustained population growth led to an unprecedented level of settlement size and density along with the population of areas that were bypassed by earlier settlers. Vinča settlements were considerably larger than any other contemporary
European culture, in some instances surpassing the cities of the
Aegean and early
Near Eastern Bronze Age a millennium later. One of the largest sites was Vinča-Belo Brdo, it covered 29 hectare and had up to 2,
500 people.
Early Vinča settlement population density was 50-200 people per hectare, in later phases an average of 50-100 people per hectare was common. The
Divostin site 4900-4650
B.C. had up to 1028 houses and a maximum population size of 8200 and could perhaps be the largest Vinča settlement. Another large site was
Stubline from
4700 B.C. it may contained a maximum population of 4000. The settlement of
Parţa maybe had 1575 people living there at the same time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin%C4%8Da_culture